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There are some issues with FSX on dual core giving this effect but I'm thinking the laptop is the same at the Dorm and at home so let's concentrate on the connection.

You get -1 if the games server gets a very poor or no response to automatically sending ICMP pings to your IP address so is the router stealthed?

Check the "common ports" scan at GRC: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 If it passes eveything (including True Stealth) then the ping requests are being dropped on arrival. Can you configure ICMPs (Port 8) to be forwarded to the DMZ machine's address?

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McthingsAuthor Commented: 2008-06-11

The laptop is the same.

I failed the test. Evertything says "Stealth" and "There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or even any computer) exists at this IP address!". All the way down.

The default behaviour of most PC's (and routers) is to automatically reflect ping requests from the outside world so when a "ping" is sent to a specific IP address the time and speed of connecton can be determined (it's a kind of Sonar for IT!).

The downside of this is it identifies that there is a computer at that IP address so if you are interested in hacking you can send out a bunch of pings to random IP addresses and everyone that comes back has a computer that could be a potential target. Firewalls can be configured to simply ignore pings so that the computer doesn't appear to exist.

Gamespy etc reply on ping as a quick & easy way of determining how good a game server is at providing a connection. It fires loads of ping requests & if all of them come back you get green, most of them get yellow and just a few back get red. All of these give positive scores. If none of the pings return then you get a negative score (-1) and red. According to ping you no longer exist so you are not worth connecting to!

What you need to do is change the firewall settings on the router so that pings are responded to. You need to let your parents know that this makes them visible on the Net while you are connected as an FSX server (although the actual risk is tiny) and ideally you need to configure the router so that it is hidden as usual once the server goes off-line.

That's the theory. Now for the practical. Need to find out how to configure the Linksys.

Back soon ......

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McthingsAuthor Commented: 2008-06-12

Sounds good. I'll standby for instructions on how to configure it to do this. Thanks again for sticking with me and figuring this out.